Turbulent combustion modeling using a flamelet generated manifold approach — a validation study in OpenFOAM

Abstract

An OpenFOAM based turbulence combustion solver with flamelet generated manifolds (FGMs) is presented in this paper. A series of flamelets, representative for turbulent flames, are calculated first by a one-dimensional (1D) detailed chemistry solver with the consideration of both transport and stretch/curvature contributions. The flame structure is then parameterized as a function of multiple reaction control variables. A manifold, which collects the 1D flame properties, is built from the 1D flame solutions. The control variables of the mixture fraction and the progress variable are solved from the corresponding transport equations. During the calculation, the scalar variables, e.g., temperature and species concentration, are retrieved from the manifolds by interpolation. A transport equation for NO is solved to improve its prediction accuracy. To verify the ability to deal with the enthalpy loss effect, the temperature retrieved directly from the manifolds is compared with the temperature solved from a transport equation of absolute enthalpy. The resulting FGM-computational fluid dynamics (CFD) coupled code has three significant features, i.e., accurate NO prediction, the ability to treat the heat loss effect and the adoption at the turbulence level, and high quality prediction within practical industrial configurations. The proposed method is validated against the Sandia flame D, and good agreement with the experimental data is obtained.